Steven Van Zandt: E Street Band guitarist explains the lasting appeal of garage rock

E Street Band guitarist and Sopranos star Steven Van Zandt, 50, is one of garage rock’s high-profile supporters. Here, he tells why the music still revs his motor.

Define garage rock.

I can tell you what it’s not. It’s not synthesizers. It’s not drum loops. It’s not keyboards in general, unless it’s a Vox Continental or Farfisa organ. It’s guitars and bass and drums and harmonicas and maracas. It’s real people playing real music. It’s primitive.

Is the new wave of Garage Rock a reaction to the lousy state of mainstream music?

Yes. The whole music business now is basically rap, metal, and pop. There’s no balance anymore. You listen to the radio, and it’s a sea of mediocrity surrounded by too many commercials. That’s why there are four or five garage bands popping up in every major city.

With all the prefabricated pop acts nowadays, kids are literally getting the Monkees.

The Monkees were the Beatles compared to what’s happening now.

Do you think Garage Rock could be a major trend?

I don’t want to sound too optimistic, but we’re seeing the evidence now. Kids are forming bands, looking at this late-’60s music, studying it, and playing it. It’s happening totally organically. Garage rock is music for older people with young souls and young people with old souls. It’s a certain sensibility, and you may have it when you’re 17 or when you’re 67. It’s never really gone away.

Do you enjoy being the poster boy for this movement?

You know how it works. Your celebrity capital rises and falls in any given year. And when you have some — temporarily, usually — you try to use it for some good. I think this is important. Rock & roll has never been more dead than now. The rock era, as I clock it, went from ’65 to ’94, from ”Like a Rolling Stone” to Kurt Cobain’s death. We are back in the pop era, and I don’t find that particularly spiritually nourishing. I’ve got five months off from The Sopranos, and I want to devote it to [promoting garage rock].

So, is Silvio Dante a Garage lover?

[Laughs] No. He likes doo-wop, Sinatra, Tony Bennett. He’s been p — -ed off since 1959 when music all started to go downhill for him.